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Saturday, January 3, 2009

How Militaristic Israel Invaded Gaza In 1967

Former U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Barack Obama claimed to be an "anti-war candidate" during his 2008 presidential campaign. But Democratic President-Elect Obama has not been very eager to condemn the recent invasion of Gaza by the war machine of his militaristic Israeli government political allies in 2009. Yet 2009 is not the first year in which the government of Israel ordered its troops to invade Gaza.

As the Palestine Book Project’s 1977 book, Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People, recalled:

“On Monday morning, June 5, 1967, Moshe Dayan ordered the attack. Flying low to evade Egyptian radar, Israeli planes headed for Egypt’s airfields. The Israelis destroyed the entire Egyptian air force while it was still on the ground…Yet for twenty-four hours after the attack, the Voice of America broadcast unceasingly that Egypt had invaded Israel. It was a version of the war many Americans never questioned.

“Without air cover Egyptian troops in the Sinai desert were vulnerable targets. Thousands of Egyptian soldiers were killed or wounded. Using the shield of Mirage jets, Israeli tank brigades pushed through the desert with lightning speed, despite some fierce fighting in the Gaza Strip by Palestinians…

“By the end of the war, Israel had captured Syria’s Golan Heights, the Egyptian Sinai and Gaza, and Jordan’s West Bank. In six days, Israeli territory had tripled in size. A million more Palestinians—those in the West Bank and Gaza—were now under Israeli occupation…

“Israel’s triumph took 35,000 Arab lives and 600 Israeli lives. Many of the Arabs who died were civilians…

“In the summer nights following the June War, Israeli tanks and jeeps prowled the streets of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers frequently stopped Palestinians for rough questioning. Any hint of defiance could lead to further questioning behind the closed doors of the nearest prison. The first Israelis to move into the occupied territories were the prison officials, the military administrators, and the Shin Beth—the Israeli secret intelligence service. Their job was to seek out any possible Palestinian resistance and eliminate it…

“Israel planned to break the Palestinians’ will to fight by harsh repression of all political activity….The Israelis not only outlawed political activity, but also attacked Palestinian economic and social institutions. They shut down Arab banks, schools and hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, replacing them with Israeli institutions…

“Israel planned to keep the rest of the population in line by a combination of force and the creation of a colonial mentality among the people. Schoolteachers in the West Bank and Gaza were forced to teach Palestinian children courses that glorified the history of Israel and belittled Arab culture. Teachers who protested were fired…

“The crowded refugee camps of Gaza were largely isolated from outside reporters and contacts. There the Israeli drive to create a passive population took its most brutal form. Heavily-armed Israeli patrols descended on the camps and cities and rounded up people indiscriminately. In one such roundup in late 1967, Israeli soldiers forced two thousand men to lie half-submerged in a lake for twenty-four hours during a storm. Other `troublemakers’ were exiled to concentration camps in the Sinai Desert. Still, Israeli soldiers rarely dared to leave their jeeps as they patrolled Gaza. Wires stretched across the road at windshield level often caused their jeeps to screech to a halt. In 1968, 200 women defied a law forbidding demonstrations and marched on Gaza prison, demanding the release of 2,000 Palestinian prisoners….”

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Interesting read, but what really puzzled me, was the stated number of 35,000 Arabs killed in the Six Day War. That figure is totally new to me - I have only seen accounts varying from 5,000 to 15,000, which is anyway less than half of this - so could I please see the source of it? I'd really appreciate it.

The source is page 113 in chapter 13 of The Palestinian Book Project's 1977 book "Our Roots Are Still Alive: The Story of the Palestinian People," which, in turn, cites Abdullah Schleifer's book, "The Fall of Jerusalem." See following link for text of "Our Roots Are Still Alive" book: